This is a thread for discussion about online and offline resources that have been and are being used to facilitate the playing of 4th Edition.

I was asked to create a topic about playing the game without the official WotC electronic tools, so I modified an existing topic.

While I subscribed to the tools, which was up until about three years ago, I got into the habit of eschewing options that I either didn't have the physical copies of, or that I hadn't really read up on in Dragon or Dungeon. Mainly I felt that this kept me from running afoul of a GM who wasn't familiar with the chosen option, or who wanted to stick to the books, and partly it was a personal challenge to myself to stick with the original options, but it was in some way a response to what I saw that the inevitable loss of those tools somewhere down the road.

And here we are.

I don't feel like I have a lot of trouble making characters in these dark days. It's not as easy as having the power cards right to hand, true, but most powers don't require a lot of transcription. I didn't tend to play spellcasters in past editions (and maybe they benefitted from a lot of the more popular spells being well known) but I feel that I'm in the place now that they sort of were. If I use commander's strike, most people know what's up, but if I use, say fearless rescue or anything outside of, say, early Paragon, I assume I'm going to have to have the details handy to explain its use.

That's me, though. I also like to be able to make characters with just a sheet of paper, rather than sitting at my computer. Anyway, if anyone has strategies or resources for making character generation easier, let's hear them.